CALATAGAN, Batangas - Markets are the gates for farmers in improving their standards of living through the income obtained from selling their produce. In building resilience of communities, a major concern is to ensure that they produce what they can sell. Far too often, interventions focus on increasing crop and animal production without complementary marketing support. This in turn leads to local markets becoming oversupplied, which results to reduced incomes for farmers.

Value chain analysis is an important tool in such planning as it studies and maps out specific physical commodity flows within a sector and the inter-relationships between actors involved in all stages of the marketing channel (Kaplinsky and Morris, 2001). Used in a participatory way, such as part of a stakeholder consultation, value chain mapping provides a focus for risk analysis, which facilitates useful discussions about risk issues; thus, promote good risk communication (FAO 2012).

A total of 25 beneficiaries from the Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) project took part on the "Climate Resilient Agriculture Pilot Projects Value Chain Analysis: Planning for the Development of Market-oriented Agricultural Enterprises" held last June 19-21, 2019 in this municipality.

The general objective of the training is to analyze the value chain of the particular commodity in the ATI CRA project areas.

Ms. Luz Guevarra from OMA-Nasugbu, together with Mr. Rafael Romulus Catada of OMA- Lobo and Mr. Norberto Licong, Jr. of OMA- Magdalena served as resource speakers, guiding the farmers in processing their commodities.

The participants are expected to formulate their market plans with their livelihood project.

Content: Hans Christopher C. Flores